Less than 8 percent of private sector workers belonged to a union in 2004, and, overall, only 12.5 percent of American workers carry a union card - down from about one-third of workers in labor's heydays in the 1950s.

She wrote that Hispanics should assimilate themselves and use the English language in mainstream society. In 2001 the PACs paid Chavez's husband $7700 her son Pablo $25000 and her son David about $10000. Secure in the knowledge that Chavez was a long-shot candidate Mikulski did not respond in kind to the barbs.

Chavez was the highest-ranking woman in President Ronald Reagan's White House and was the first Latina ever nominated to the United States Cabinet when President George W. Linda Lou Chavez (born June 17 1947) is an American author commentator and radio talk show host. She withdrew from consideration for the position when it emerged that Linda Chavez had employed an illegal immigrant.